Deals are still moving, but confidence in delivery is shaping the market

By Tony Sanchez 1st June 2026

It’s been another busy week across the bridging and specialist finance market, with continued activity across refinancing, development finance, commercial repositioning and lender expansion.

Based on activity published on Bridging Loan Directory over the past week, lender appetite remains very much present.

Large transactions are still completing, lenders continue launching products and funding lines, and borrowers are still moving ahead with complex projects.

But the market conversation is increasingly centred around something else: confidence in delivery.

Not simply whether a deal can complete initially, but how it progresses once funding is in place. How realistic the exit remains. How flexible the structure is if timelines move. Whether planning, leasing, refinancing or construction assumptions still hold six months later.

That came through repeatedly this week.

SHC Capital and Ortus Secured Finance completed a £39m London portfolio bridging loan within 15 days. ScotLend completed a £1.3m refinance to give borrowers breathing room around asset sales. Mortimer Street Capital arranged a refurbishment facility in Cambridge designed to support a commercial repositioning strategy while maintaining flexibility during the early stages of the scheme.

Elsewhere, OakNorth provided a loan-on-loan facility to Gold Funding, while Investec highlighted continued syndication growth as its platform surpassed £1bn.

Taken together, the activity points toward a market becoming more operationally sophisticated beneath the surface.

Funding structures are becoming more layered. Transitional finance remains highly active. Relationship continuity is becoming more valuable as schemes move through planning, delivery and eventual exit.

That also helps explain why lender messaging increasingly focuses on flexibility, structuring and relationship management rather than headline speed alone.

Even product refreshes and pricing changes this week from lenders including InterBay, Shawbrook, TML and Wey Bridging Finance were largely positioned around usability, flexibility and supporting more varied borrower requirements.

The market remains active, but activity is increasingly concentrated around transactions where lenders have confidence not just in the asset, but in the borrower’s ability to manage the scheme through to delivery.

That marks an important shift from earlier in the cycle.

The conversation is no longer simply about access to capital.

Increasingly, it is about how confidently that capital can move through an environment where planning, refinancing, construction and exit timelines are becoming harder to predict with certainty.